


A Stagnant Life

by Hallianna



Series: The Detective and the Vault Dweller [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, Friendship, Gen, dealing with death, lots of emotions, nick isn't sure what to make of nina quite yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hallianna/pseuds/Hallianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A beat up chair, an old synth detective, and a woman out of time.  The story of a chair and the budding relationship between Nina and Nick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stagnant Life

**Author's Note:**

> My first Fallout 4 fic. More to come.

He found her on the floor of her house staring at a worn, partially burned blue armchair.  A bottle of beer and a carton of cigarettes sat at her side.  One butt was smoking in a nearby ashtray and from number of cigarettes left in the carton, he figured she’d smoked at least half already.  A hammer and several nails sat within reach as well. **  
**

She was staring at the chair like it had betrayed her somehow.  Worry and stress and something else he had no name for notched lines between her eyebrows.  She looked sad and older, older than he’d seen her ever look these last months.

Nina was a cheerful sort, friendly and outgoing - even when the generators went out and threatened their food supply; even when raiders or super mutants attacked; even when settlers were kidnapped.  She handled each problem with the kind of grace he didn’t know humans were capable of. Maybe it was the time she’d come from, the time he only had foggy memories and no real grasp on.  

But lately, he’d come to realize it was just her.  Displaced from her time in a world that did her no kindness, and she still found room in her heart to do right by the people of the Commonwealth.

If that wasn’t special, he didn’t know what was.

“I don’t think that chair’s worth it, Nina,” he said by way of greeting, stepping through the doorway and into the patch of sunlight to her right.  “If you want one like it, I bet we can find half a dozen of ‘em scattered across the Commonwealth in better shape.”

Nina picked up the nearly empty beer bottle, raised it to her lips, and guzzled the rest.  “The damn leg on it’s broken.  I was trying to fix it.”

He kneeled beside her, the frayed ends of his trench coat leaving marks in the dust on the floor.  To his knowledge, this was the first time she’d been in here since telling him it had been her house, two hundred years ago.  She’d said it with a sad little smile that was there and then gone; as if he’d blinked too fast and imagined it.

But synths didn’t imagine things.  He didn’t think himself capable of something so terribly human. He knew his limitations, and his limits too.

She looked at him then and he saw streaks in the dust on her face.  She’d been…crying?  Over a chair?  His mind whirled, trying to process the why behind such a thing.

“Hey, if the chair means that much to you, I’m sure we can fix it.  I bet Sturges would know -”

“It’s not about the damn chair!” she yelled, slamming the bottle down.  “It’s not!”

He sat beside her then, not liking how kneeling made him taller than her.  She needed to talk, that much was certain.  She’d confided in him before - about her son, a little about her life before.  But they mostly talked about his past….his and the real Nick Valentine’s, the strange welding of human and mechanical, to the point where he wasn’t always sure where he started and ended, and how much of what he knew and who he was belonged to the real Nick.

“So it’s not about the chair,” he deadpanned, immediately wondering if he’d said the wrong thing from the way she glared at him.  But in another flash, just a blink really, her face softened and she dropped her head to her knees. “Hey,” he said, reaching out and then yanking his good hand back.   _What in the hell am I doing?_

“It’s a goddamn chair,” she finally said, voice muffled against her knees.  “I know I shouldn’t be so attached but…”  She pulled her head up, her brown eyes eerily bright.  “It really isn’t about the chair, Nick.”  She reached a hand out and brushed her fingers against the worn fabric.  “It’s so much more than the chair.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

She gave him another small, sad smile.  “You don’t mind me chewing on your ear for a bit?”

He shrugged, felt the pull of a worn joint, ignored it.  “You let me chew on you long enough.  Hell, you helped me find and kill that bastard Eddie Winter.  I think I’m overdue on repayment.”

Nina laughed, a short, strangled sound.  But he was just glad for any laugh. She liked laughing with him.   _Never at you, Nick_ , she’d told him a bunch of times. _I laugh because I think you’re funny.  And charming._

_Must be something left over of the real Nick’s charm_ , he’d shot back, _because we know it’s not me.  Not really._

_You stop that right now_ , she’d scolded him.   _You are Nick.  Nick is you.  It doesn’t matter how or why.  What matters is you’re here now._

“It’s not about the chair,” she said again, softer this time.  “But it is.  This chair….this damn chair was with me way before.”

“Before?”

“Before anything, really.”  She scooted closer to the chair, running her fingers down the front of one arm.  “It was my grandmother’s, the first piece of furniture I had when I bought this house.”  Nina sighed, looked back at him. “You sure you really want the whole tale?”

Nick pulled the carton of cigarettes closer, took one out, and lit up.  “As long as you don’t mind sharing the smokes.”

She smiled, a little wider and for a bit longer than before.  Nick felt something tick inside him, like his heart had stuttered for a moment.   _Weird.  I must be getting closer to a tune-up than I thought._

“I bought this house in college,” she said by way of starting her story.  “I’d saved up money from odd jobs, just to pay for books and supplies, that sort of thing.  And then my grandmother died and left me a bunch of money.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Nick said, pulling the cigarette away from his lips.  “That couldn’t have been easy.”

She shook her head.  “No, no it wasn’t.  I loved her, more than I loved my own parents.  Sounds crazy, I know, but she was the one who really raised me.” She batted smoke away with a grime-covered hand.  “Anyways.  I got rid of my shitty apartment and bought this place.  It was brand new, state of the art, had all the gadgets and gizmos and whirlibobs you could want.  And the only piece of real furniture I had when I moved in was that damn chair.  It had been hers, her favorite.  It was the only thing, other than some photos, I took from her house.”  She looked up at the partially collapsed ceiling, jaw tight.   It was too much space for me but I thought, one day….one day I’d fill it with people I loved.  Seemed the right thing to do, to preserve her memory that way.

“It’s a nice sentiment,” he admitted, blowing smoke away from them.  It didn’t do much good - a wind had picked up as the sun started to go down, so the smoke curled around them, ringing them in a grey haze.  “How long did it take you to realize you needed more than a chair?”

She huffed out a laugh.  “Too long.  I spent the first few nights in that chair, too stubborn to spend more money on a bed.  I woke up with one too many headaches and finally broke down and bought a real bed.  But the chair stayed.”  She poked a finger in a hole in the fabric and wiggled it around.  “I read in this chair.  Studied in it.  Watched more than few sunsets from it.”

He finished the cigarette, lit another.  “But there’s more to the story.”

“Yeah.”  She flicked her butt into the ashtray and reach for another one, only to have Nick hand her the one he’d been smoking.  “Thanks.”

“No problem.  I should have remembered _ladies first_.”

“Such a gentleman,” she teased.   “The men of the Commonwealth could learn a little from you.”

“I doubt it.”

She laughed and he felt that tick again, pulling low at him.  “Oh, so my story. So when I met Nate, I still had the chair.”

“Let me guess,” he intoned. “He hated it.”

“Nope.  Loved it.  I had to fight him for it some nights, after he’d moved in.”  Her eyes went glassy with memory.  “He said something about it fitting him better than any new chair had.  That it cupped his ass just right.”  She snorted. “He….he always had a slightly inappropriate sense of humor.  One of the things I loved about him.”

She was silent for a moment and Nick took that time to look her over.  She was dirty, but that was the constant state of the Commonwealth now.  Dirty and rundown.  She’d pulled old jeans and a grey sweatshirt from who knew where, and they were loose on her athletic frame.  Nina was strong, he knew that from firsthand experience when she’d dragged him by the collar out of the range of bullets whizzing overhead.

But her hair was in a neat knot at the base of her skull and she’d drawn on some kind of eyeliner he’d never seen before.    _Wonder if that stuff gets radiated like everything else.  That can’t be good for the skin if that’s the case._

But it looked good on her, making her brown eyes bigger, drawing attention to her long lashes.  He let his gaze rake over her, only stopping when she realized he was watching her.  “Don’t tell me how filthy I am,” she groaned, swiping a hand down her face. It only made the dirt there worse.  “I already know.”

“I think you missed a spot,” he said drily, making her groan again.

“You’re not funny.”

“Really?”  He tried to look hurt and failed.  She snickered at his drawn down brows.  “Shit, I’m no good at all these facial expressions.  And I interrupted you.”

She pointed a finger at him.  “You did.  That’s bad manners, Valentine.”

“Sorry.”

She knocked her shoulder into his.  “Don’t apologize.  Just listen to the rest of the story.  I’ll make it short, I promise.  So the damn chair stayed.  Nate loved it.  I loved it.  And we got engaged, and then married.  And I got a good job in Boston, but that meant driving.  A lot.  So Nate was often home before me.” Her face turned sad again.  He hated seeing her like that.  “And I worked and worked and it helped with money because Nate was still finishing school and we needed it.  But that damn job….”

She sighed.  “That damn job nearly drove us apart.  I started coming home so late, that it almost wasn’t worth it to come home at all.  So I started packing a suitcase for those nights, so I could sleep at the office and just change and go back to work.  Then I’d come home and he was angry.  He had every right to be.”  She went back to poking the hole in the chair.  “I remember he was in this chair and it was 2 am when I walked in the door.  He was just sitting there, so angry.  So hurt.”

A tear ran down her cheek.  He wanted to wipe it away.  Almost did, but he pulled his hand back before she noticed.  “It was awful.  We fought.  We yelled at each other and said awful things and stood in this room, that chair between us, and I thought right then that my marriage was over.”

“So I quit.  I quit the job and the firm and focused on being a housewife.  We had some money saved up and we’d wanted to buy a new car, but that didn’t seem so important when our marriage was about to blow up.”

She batted a hand in the air.  “Long story a bit shorter, I was home and Nate graduated and found a job.  And then we…decided to have a baby.”

Nina smiled at him, her face a conflicting array of emotions as she was remembering.  “How long was this before -?” he started to ask, then stopped. _Stupid question, Valentine._

“About two years.  Making a baby doesn’t happen on the first try, you know.”

He chuckled, raspy from the smoke.  “So I’ve heard.”

She turned on him then, smirking.  “Oh really, Valentine?  What do you know about making babies?”

He tapped the side of his head with his bad hand.  “I’ve got a few things about humans stored up here.  You can thank the Institute for that.”

She laughed, then choked on a lungful of smoke.  “All the history of the world at their disposal and they loaded you up with the intricacies of fucking?”

It was his turn to cough, more from shock than smoke.  “Whose potty mouth are you using right now?”

Nina pointed her nearly gone cigarette at him.  “For your information, I have a terrible ‘potty mouth’.  I just learned a long time ago that you don’t use certain words in public.”

“Just around me, apparently.”

She nudged his shoulder again.  “No, just around good friends.”

Warmth suffused every wire, joint, and sensor in his body.  It was…..odd, but not bad.  He fought back a shiver.   _Probably just some neural feedback._  “Well, thanks for that.”

“Any time, Valentine.”  She stubbed out her cigarette, lit a third.  “Well, since we’re talking about it - “

“You brought up it.”

“I did, didn’t I?”  Nina looked downright pleased with herself.  “Let’s just say Shaun might have been conceived in that chair.”

His eyes widened, danced from the chair to her to the chair again.  “Right.”

“That’s it?”

“Hey, you’re the one talking about….you know…”

“Fucking,” she said, spreading the two syllables out.  “Can I get back to my story or do you need a diagram?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Good.”  The smirk dropped from her face.  He hated that she was suddenly sad again.   _Maybe I should have let her keep talking about that.  At least then she would have been smiling.  And I might have learned a thing or two._

“See this hole?”  she asked, pointing to one on the top of the left arm of the chair.  “It’s not from the blast.”

Nick leaned forward, inspected the burn.  It was small.  Too circular, too neat. “No?”

She chuckled softly.  “Nate had quit smoking when we started trying for a baby. But one night we had a little too much wine with dinner and booze always made him want to smoke.  He’d hidden a packet of cigarettes away, for emergencies he’d said.  And we were sitting in this chair, drunk and laughing and making out and he dropped one of his emergency cigarettes right there.”  

She ran her thumb over the hole.  “I was too drunk to be mad at him.  I gave him hell for burning my grandmother’s chair in the morning but right then….God, we laughed so hard about it.  I think we were lucky we didn’t catch the whole damn house on fire.”

Nina let out a breath, smoke floating out and into the air above their heads. Nick could almost feel his sensors clogging up from the haze but he didn’t care.  She was still talking, getting it all out.  That was what mattered.  “Any other memories tied to the chair?” he asked gently, offering her another cigarette.

She waved him off.  “I’ve already had about three too many.  That stuff will kill you, you know.”  Hugging her knees to her chest, she said, “Yeah, one more.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded.  “I rocked Shaun to sleep in that chair on so many nights.  And when I couldn’t stay awake any longer, Nate somehow knew every single time.  He’d come out and take Shaun and tell me to go to bed.”  She bit the inside of her cheek.  “He was good like that.”

“Sounds like a good guy,” Nick agreed.  “I don’t know much about parenting.  Hell, I don’t know anything about parenting.  But it sounds like you two were partners.”

“We were,” she agreed.  “Right up to the day when he sat here with Shaun and we watched the news about how the world had gone to hell.”

“Oh.  Right.”  He flicked his butt into the ashtray.  “Shit.”

“You could say that again.”

Silence suffused around them.  Nick wasn’t sure what to say at this point. She’d unloaded a lot, dumping information and memories.  He knew what that felt like, in some sense.

Human or synth, you only had room for so much before you overloaded.

“So it’s not just a chair,” he said slowly.  “It’s a part of your life.”  He put his good hand on top of hers, not hesitating this time.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t get that earlier.”

Nina looked down at his hand resting on hers, then to him.  She lifted their hands and linked them, her warm fingers going between his.  The tick was back, but it now came wrapped in a heat he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, stop.  “Don’t apologize,” she said hoarsely.  “I just appreciate you listening to me ramble.”

“It’s not a hardship to listen to a pretty gal talk,” he said, the words slipping out faster than he could stop them.

Her brows drew up in surprised, but she held on tighter to his hand.  “A pretty gal, huh?  Such a sweet talker you are, Valentine.”

“Ha.  I’m just an old, beat up synth.  No sweet talker here.”

She squeezed his hand tighter.  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”  He waited a moment before going back to her story, unsure if it was curiosity or something else pushing him along at this point.  “So when I walked in a bit ago, you were reliving those memories you just told me about?  I can see how that would be hard.”

She pushed back until they were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.  Their joined hands rested between them.  “Yes.  And no.”

“Was there something else?”

She took in a deep breath, the trailing ends of it stuttering into her lungs in a way that made him worried.  “I just….it’s painful.  All of it.  And yet I’m here, alive.  And my son is out there somewhere.  And getting stuck in these memories is killing me but I keep coming back to how goddamn ordinary my life had been.”  

“Nothing wrong with an ordinary life,” he said quietly, watching her stare at the chair once more.  “I think a lot of folks out here wouldn’t mind a little more ordinary.”

She laughed then, the sound broken, ragged.  “Here I am, crying and moaning over a damn chair when people are dying all around us.”  She turned to him, her expression pained.  “But I keep being selfish and wondering….”

She trailed off, took another breath.  “Did I live a stagnant life?  Was there anything in my life, from before, that was worth it?  Because in the face of all this struggle, all the chaos now….I can’t help but think that.”

He didn’t have a good answer for her.  His mind churned with implications, possibilities.  He felt bad, even guilty, for not having a good answer for her immediately.  She was clearly in pain, needing someone to soothe the torrent of emotions coursing through her - he only needed to look at her face and feel her rapid heartbeat through the thin skin of her wrist to know it.

But it wasn’t until she put her head on his shoulder that he found the answer he’d been searching for.  “I think if you’d led a more exciting life, before the blast, you might not have made it to the vault.  Which means you wouldn’t be here, now.  Helping all those people in pain, trying to calm all that chaos.”  Nick put his bad hand under her chin, lifting her face until their eyes met.  “It means I wouldn’t have met you.  And I can’t help but think how much worse off I’d be if that was the case.  So I’d rather not think about it.  Because that stagnant life led you here.”

Nina stared at him, long and hard.  “Nick, I….”  She stopped, shook her head. “Thank you.”

He smiled.  “You’re welcome.”

She settled her head back on his shoulder and took a deep breath.  “I owe you, Nick.”

“For what?  If anyone owes someone else, that’s me to you.”

“Yes, I do.  And I know where to start.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  She picked her head up off his shoulder and leaned in close. “Consider this a deposit.”  And she brushed soft lips over the ruined skin on his cheek.  A shudder, unbidden and surprising, shook his frame.  “I’m going to say thank you one more time,” she whispered, “and then you and I are getting out of this house and going over to Preston’s for drinks and radstag steaks.”

He turned his head and smiled at her.  “You know I don’t eat.”

“And you’re missing out on the culinary feast that is radstag.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”  He got to his feet and offered her his good hand. She took it and was pulled up, coming very close to him.  At this point, the heat he felt down every wire should have been shorting him out.  Instead, it gave him a thrill - wholly foreign, but not unwelcome.  She was close, too close…so close that if he’d wanted to, he could have cupped the back of her head with a hand and erased the last few inches between them.

He wanted to.  But he didn’t.  Instead, he said, “Let’s get going, then.”

Something like disappointment flashed across her face, but she shook it off.  “If we get there now, we can watch Deacon and Cait bicker again.”

He motioned her to the door and when she met him there, he offered his arm to her.  She took it with a nod and a smile.  “Oh, great.  A mouthy Irish broad and a man of too many disguises and jokes fighting?  Get me ringside seats.”

“The best entertainment in the Commonwealth.”

“I can think of a few things more entertaining.”

“Yeah, like what?”

He winked at her.  “Ask me again later.”


End file.
